MINNEAPOLIS – It takes a lot to get the cucumber-cool Joe Mauer upset. Two pitches by Detroit's Armando Galarraga that had him jumping out of the way in Monday night's series opener would certainly qualify for that list.

Mauer said after the game that he was convinced the third-inning pitches – one behind him and another that made him lunge out of harm's way and give a long look to Galarraga and home plate umpire James Hoye – were meant to hit him.

“It wasn't necessary, you know?” Mauer said after the Twins lost 5-4. “Especially the second one. I guess that's the way it goes.”

Before Tuesday night's game against the Twins, Tigers manager Jim Leyland responded.

“We thought (Carlos) Guillen had been thrown at. Only we threw ours low, they threw their's high. That's my message,” Leyland said.

Leyland and the Tigers were upset when Twins starter Glen Perkins nearly hit Guillen in the head with a pitch in the first inning. Perkins later apologized, saying it was a sinker that got away from him.

“We didn't hit anybody. They didn't hit anybody,” Leyland said. “If we'd have wanted to hit somebody, we'd have hit him. We threw ours low, they threw their's high. It went over the guy's head all the way to the backstop on the fly.”

Leyland took exception to Perkins' pitch in large part because of Guillen's history of success against the lefty, and the control Perkins displayed through the rest of an impressive start in which he went 6 1-3 innings and struck out a career-high seven.

“The guy's 4-for-5 off (Perkins) with a home run and two doubles, all of a sudden the control's real good to everybody else and the one pitch the whole game? That doesn't smell real good,” said Leyland, calmly and casually sprinkling expletives into the assessment in his trademark manner. “Our guys didn't like that.”

When told of Leyland's comments, Twins manager Ron Gardenhire defended Perkins and said he wasn't too happy that Galarraga twice threw pitches way inside to Mauer.

“It's a good hitter up there and you get one up at his lips, you know you're going to get something back,” said Gardenhire, who was ejected for arguing with Hoye after the umpire issued warnings to both dugouts following Mauer's confrontation with Galarraga. “But you shouldn't get two somethings back.”

The two managers are close friends and Leyland often calls Gardenhire the best manager in the game. With the Tigers starting Tuesday 2½ games behind the second-place Twins in the AL Central, the tension figures to linger through the series, and the rest of the season.

But Leyland said he considered the case closed.

“Absolutely. No issues. No problems whatsoever,” he said. “My players were very uncomfortable with that and so am I anytime I see one at the head. I'm not saying (Perkins) was trying to or not. I don't know what was going on. But I'm sure they felt that way (about Galarraga). There's always two sides to the story. We felt that way too.”